


Blest is the man ordain'd our voice to hear

by ViaLethe



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 06:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20466173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: Troubled by an appalling translation of The Odyssey, Eustace questions his cousins and writes to Professor Kirke on the subject of Sirens. Honeyed throats, bah.





	Blest is the man ordain'd our voice to hear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts).

_My Dear Professor Kirke,_

_I write to you regarding a uniquely Narnian problem, one which I thought you might be as pleased as I was to apply yourself to puzzling out._

_It all started with a beastly translation of Homer’s _Odyssey_ (of all things), which I was forced to read in school. The fellow’s prose was already pompous enough for my taste (in fairness I must admit that Pole thought it splendid), but in the passage on the sirens he quite outdid himself, dribbling on for simply ages about ‘lonely seafarers’ and ‘honeyed throats’._

_Well, I tell you, Professor - I saw sirens in Narnia. And they were wild, bestial things that had a kind of terrifying beauty to them, and not a bit of honey. They made me feel frightened and lost, I don’t mind saying, and not a bit lonely at all, certainly not for their company! I was rather glad that Caspian ordered the _Dawn Treader_ steered well away, and I felt Edmund agreed with me, though Lucy seemed disappointed to have missed them. I couldn’t have imagined why, and being the selfish, oblivious little prig I was back in those days, I never thought to ask._

_Now I have, and I find myself more confused than ever, for no one can seem to agree on the slightest thing about them!_

_Peter’s description most matches that of our esteemed (ha!) translator’s, as he reports them as beautiful, but requiring both respect and a safe distance. Something to be observed, but not experienced._

***

For Peter, they appear as mermaids, the scales on their bodies glimmering, mail-bright.

The mer-folk had warned them, back at the shores of Cair Paravel, early on when they were still only children. “Beware our cousins,” they said. “They have much to share, but their song is not meant to be heard. You must not listen.”

Still, he finds himself unprepared. When their glistening forms rise from the seafoam, their hair spilling loose over bare shoulders, all his kingly poise and command flees, leaving Peter rooted to the spot.

Only when song begins to fall from their lips does his mind return, warnings crashing through his brain like boulders down a mountain. Vaguely he recalls a tale of a man who stuffed his ears with wax when approaching sirens, but alas, he has none to hand, and settles instead for clapping his hands over his ears.

He can’t even find it in his heart to regret looking like a frightened child, for their words still penetrate. Fainter, to be sure, and he misses their initial overture in the deafening clap of palms meeting ears, but what he hears is chilling enough.

“Never come back,” they say, and words overlap in his mind, ringing like ancient bells, faint and muffled through the pulse of blood roaring in his ears; _cherished_, he hears, and _exile, once_ and _always_.

He sings desperately to himself, his voice sounding thin and ragged, torn at the edges; a little rhyme of Lucy’s, then a song of praise to Aslan, and a low, rolling tune of the dwarfs that tells of the history of Narnia.

Gradually, his voice grows stronger, and their glistening forms fade from view. The current bears him onwards.

They do not pursue, and his heart aches with the wrung-out, exhausted drain of a narrow escape; and with the spark of longing denied.

***

_Lucy said they were like great birds, and the most delightful things she ever heard, but ‘not quite safe’, if I took her meaning. I’m not certain I did, though I can imagine. _

***

When Lucy spies them, they are winged, for she has always loved that which flies, hollow-boned, along wind and waves.

Their bones, like their eyes, are far from hollow. 

She knows well what the mer-folk say. Their warning rings in her ears, rolling like the waves, drowning out whatever may fall from their lips as well as cotton wool. Still, she smiles, and waves - surely they are Aslan’s creatures just as much as the rest, and nothing His light touched could ever be wrong in her eyes.

The lead siren - or the one Lucy takes for the lead, at least, as she is the biggest and, clearly, boldest of the trio - takes flight, and draws up just short of Lucy, her great wings beating, stirring the air around them, though all else is still as glass.

Somewhere deep inside the ocean of calm that is her blank mind, Lucy notes the rapidity of her heartbeat, the shallowness of her breath, the tiny animal part of her heart crying _danger_, even as her eyes catch and fasten unaccountably on the feathers of those great wings. No ragged seabird wings, these, beaten by a thousand voyages through salt and fog and the endless watery expanse; instead they are smooth, a creamy white fading to gold at the edges, reminding Lucy of something, a scrap of memory floating like down just out of reach.

When the setting sun hits their fanned spread, it turns to a golden fuzz, an encircling halo that tugs at Lucy’s heart in a way she could never properly describe afterwards.

“Little lioness, we have nothing to sing to you,” the siren says, reaching out one hand (so slow, so gentle, Lucy barely registers the talons) to brush through Lucy’s hair, with a wistful smile. “Your ears are open, but your sweet heart is full to overflowing.” And then she is gone. Her powerful wings drive her ever upward, her sisters following in her wake.

Lucy will always remember the voice; clear, and bright; the sounds of sunlight, and cool water, soft fur, the joy of reunions and the anticipation of adventure all blended into one, whispering to her on the edge of sleep, making her shiver with delight.

***

_Edmund turned quite pale when I asked about them, much as he looked on deck that day I spied them, and said they were powerful, dangerous, and best left well enough alone. I managed to pry out that he believed they had neither wings nor scaled tails, though he refused to tell me a thing more. I daresay it’s safe to assume he is part of the anti-’honeyed throats’ contingent! _

***

For Edmund they are nightmares out of memory, out of dreams, out of imagination.

They come to him there in the Darkness where dreams come true, their forms rising like mist, swirling around him even in the utter stillness of the air.

One is pale as the dawn, a thin, colorless thing that he can’t quite manage to keep an eye on; one has fire in her hair, like the blaze of a setting sun. He fancies he can hear it crackle as she brushes past, thought it does nothing to warm the black.

The last has hair like black smoke, skin like snow, and red, red lips.

They open, and Edmund shivers. Her teeth are sharp.

When they speak, it is in harmony; the red lips speaking first, and loudest, and her sisters following behind, a sibilant echo in his ears.

“Listen to our song,” they say. “Listen, O Just One, and hear all that we know.”

“I-” _I don’t know want to know_, his mind wants to say. His mouth cannot form the words, a thin thread of sound dying away as soon as it leaves his lips.

“We know every story,” they say. “We know what should have been, if paths long closed were taken.”

His throat is paralyzed, tight with horror and dry as dust. And yet, in a small, treacherous sliver of his heart - 

Before his eyes, the sister of the red lips swirls near, and tilts her head to one side, her mouth closed over those dreadful teeth, curving up. “You have always wanted to know,” she says. Her breath is like ice, and she is close now, so close. “You will be brought joy of our words, and be blessed.”

_Blessed_ echoes around him, susurrations fading into stillness like ripples in a pond. Somewhere nearby, he knows, there is light, and Lucy, and Caspian, Reep and all the rest. And yet, and yet - 

She lifts her hand, palm out, and he watches, locked deep in his mind, as his own rises to meet it, fingertips a hair's breadth from touching.

And then! The high, bright call of an albatross pierces the veil like an arrow to Edmund’s heart, the silence falling away. The vaporous forms around him swirl, agitated, and rear back as the bird flies close, snapping and chattering its great beak at their mist.

He shudders then, and tears his eyes from those lips, watching the bird settle on the prow.

Still, on the edge of vision, he sees her fading away, and hears her last whisper as she presses her mouth to his ear, the words landing feather light in its delicate shell.

“Wonder always, little king: Is your place in this world worth the loss?”

He does.

***

_I didn’t bother to ask Susan, of course._

_So there you have it, Professor. Four different encounters, and while we all seem able to agree they were, in fact, the same creatures, or creatures of the same family at least, everything else disagrees! I suspect this is one of those Narnian mysteries that we aren’t meant to know the way of, but I should like to hear your opinion on the whole matter, and I know the others would be interested as well._

_With Highest Regards,_

_Eustace Scrubb_

***

To Susan, they are merely women, naked and unashamed among the rocks, the damp glistening on their skin, throwing a veil of iridescence over their hair.

She knows what the mer-folk have told her. She has weighed the risks, the rewards, and wades into the waves, balanced.

They stay silent at her approach, heads cocked, eyes bright. The wind raises prickles along Susan’s skin, whips her hair around her face like fog, carries the distant cry of gulls to her ears.

“You have come to listen,” they say, finally, when she stands dripping before them, drenched in salt, close enough to touch. To hear. They speak as one, with the voice of harmony and hurricanes.

“To ask,” she corrects, for this is vital. “I want to know, not merely be _told_.”

“All truths are known from the song of our mouths,” they say, and in their voice she hears Lucy’s laughter, Ed’s low rumble, shades of Aslan’s purr.

She cannot explain to them, these fearless creatures, the turmoil inside her; how there is a whirlpool beneath her gentle exterior, how she feels she will burn alive sometimes with the longing to be something light, and pure, and free.

Their eyes on her are frank, and she thinks perhaps they do not need to be told.

“What is the truth?” she asks.

_Oh daughter, it is better not to know,_ the waves sigh, surging to her hips and away, seeking to pull her loose, into the rising tide.

She stands her ground, toes curling around sand and shells. Susan has always been stubborn.

The sirens smile, but there are edges in it.

“This then, is the truth:  
They love you.  
You are as loyal as you are able to be.  
You are as you were made. You cannot be otherwise.  
Someday you will believe it is enough.”

They slip from their rocks as the tide washes over them, merging with the seafoam washing around her. Still, she can feel their touch on her skin, feather light and cold as deep water, as they pass, and hear a last whisper.

_We will wait for you._

This is what Susan could have told Eustace about sirens, had he asked: They are knowledge, given form. Beautiful, wild, terrifying. Forbidden, and glorious.

***

_Eustace,_

_How delightful to hear from you, and how wonderful to know your mind remains dedicated to reconciling Narnia with our world. On the matter in question, I suspect the conflicting tales can be accounted for thus: Narnian sirens appear and act not only according to their own nature, but to the nature and expectations of those who encounter them. That is the sort of thing the Great Lion would have liked!_

_I hope this gives you more to ponder on, and would enjoy discussing it further in the future when next I see you all in person._

_Until then,  
D. Kirke_

**Author's Note:**

> The translation that Eustace so loathes (and paraphrases) is the Fitzgerald; the timeline is fudged since it came out a few years too late for him to have ever read, much less in school, but it suited my purposes best. The title is from Pope's translation.


End file.
